Global Policy Forum

By Walter Pincus

Washington - At the height of the Cold War, the United States secretly deployed thousands of nuclear weapons in 15 other countries, introducing bombs into some - such as Iceland and Morocco - without their leaders' knowledge, according to a study published Wednesday by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Although many of the deployments had been revealed earlier, the study contains the most comprehensive list of U.S. nuclear weapons and the dates when they were placed in locations outside the 48 contiguous United States, including Hawaii, Alaska and some Pacific islands under U.S. control as well as other countries. The list is based largely on the Defense Department's own history of such deployments from 1945 to 1977.

Written in 1978, the Pentagon history was partly declassified this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group. The Pentagon blacked out the names of all but three countries: Cuba, West Germany and Britain. Because the locations were listed in alphabetical order and the authors of the study had a wealth of corroborating data from other sources, they believe they were able to identify 12 other countries, naming some for the first time.

The study reveals, for example, that nuclear bombs were stored from 1956 to 1959 at the U.S. base in Iceland, which has a strong nonnuclear tradition and publicly opposed many of NATO's nuclear policies. It also said that from December 1961 until mid-1963, a period that included the Cuban missile crisis, the United States kept ''nuclear-capable'' depth charges at its base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These anti-submarine weapons technically were not nuclear bombs, because they were stored without their vital plutonium ''pits.'' But it was possible to insert the pits, which were kept in storage nearby in Florida, quickly.

Without telling the French government, President Harry S. Truman in January 1952 also authorized the storage of nuclear-capable bombs, lacking only the fissile component, at Strategic Air Command bases in French Morocco. Complete nuclear bombs, intended for delivery by bombers against the Soviet Union, were deployed in Morocco from 1954 to 1963.

One of the study's authors, Robert Norris, a senior research analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Tuesday he had a U.S. government document that said France ''should not be informed'' about the weapons in Morocco, which was a French and Spanish protectorate at the time. The Moroccan government apparently was informed after the country gained independence in 1956. Contrary to most scholars' assumptions, complete U.S. nuclear weapons were deployed in Morocco even before they were placed in Britain, according to Mr. Norris and his co-authors, William Arkin and William Burr.

Nuclear-capable bombs, minus their essential uranium or plutonium, were also sent to Japan, the country with the strongest anti-nuclear feelings. They were deployed by the Eisenhower administration during the U.S.-China crisis over the Taiwan Straits in 1954-55. Beginning at about the same time, complete nuclear bombs, artillery shells and missile warheads were placed in Alaska, Hawaii and Okinawa. Later in the 1950s, such weapons were deployed in South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan, according to the study. Mr. Norris said Tuesday it was not clear whether those countries had been informed of the initial deployments.

Because of domestic sensitivities, foreign leaders often have not wanted to acknowledge the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons on their soil, and it is difficult for historians to determine whether or when they received formal notification. In the past, such revelations have sometimes caused a furor. Five years ago, the United States acknowledged that it had kept nuclear weapons from 1958 to 1965 at Thule Air Base in Greenland, part of the realm of Denmark, a stridently nonnuclear country.